May 31, 2005

I spend a lot of time outdoors when it's warm out, particularly on my back deck. From there I can watch the visitors to the bird feeder and birdbath under a big oak tree in the middle of my back yard.

Our bird variety is a little lacking: grackles, starlings, sparrows and the occasional cardinal or blue jay. We have one woodpecker that doesn't care for the bird feeder but will go for popcorn or bread. The squirrels have found the feeder, too, and I've seen as many as five underneath it at once. Sometimes a chipmunk will join in as well.

It's fun to watch the starlings with their huge, fledgling babies. The young ones don't have the adults' smooth, slightly spotted feathers yet but they're fully as big as the parents. They follow the older birds around squawking piteously and opening their yellow-rimmed beaks to be fed. I've noticed that the parents will eat their fill first before feeding their demanding young 'uns.

They were making themselves scarce earlier in the spring, but lately I'm seeing plenty of rabbits in the yard. I think I've glimpsed one of the ginger-colored rabbits, but most are the common brown variety. So far they haven't discovered my lettuce garden, but I should probably step up my harvest just in case.

Our back yard is very park-like because there are no fences between the large, wide yards. We often see foxes and woodchucks near the woods, and the raccoons and possums will come right up to the house at night. We have to have very secure trash can lids to keep the raccoons from festooning the yard with garbage the night before trash day.

I grew up on a 13-acre lot in a more rural suburb where we'd see deer in the pasture with the horses and wild turkeys in the woods. Even though I live closer to the city now, I'm glad to have this much wildlife to watch. Maybe I'll work on growing a butterfly garden next...

May 30, 2005

Today's the last day of my three-day weekend and so far I'm having a lovely and relaxing time.

On Saturday, I finally got a haircut. My bangs were so long that I was starting to look like Jane Ramone, the heretofore unknown female member of The Ramones. (Have I mentioned that my hair is dark brown these days? Well it is.)

Yesterday, my husband and I spent the afternoon at the zoo, burned through all our weekend cash eating out, and finished up the evening watching a DVD of Supersize Me. I don't think I'm likely to want a fast food meal again anytime soon.

I'm headed to another yoga class this morning now that my shoulders aren't so sore anymore. This afternoon we're going to the military cemetary where my husband's mother and stepfather are buried. After that, I'll probably head to my dad's house to take care of an office project or two for his business. At some point, I also need to plant the flat of impatiens I bought two weeks ago.

The rest of this week promises to be exceedingly busy, so I'm happy to have had the time to kick back and relax a bit. If I'm very lucky, maybe I'll even manage a nap this afternoon...

May 27, 2005

When I woke up this morning, I was greeted by some muscles that had been in hibernation until yesterday's yoga session. My shoulders and triceps were particularly sore. I think all my time at the computer keyboard had been turning me into Bloggasaurus Rex, with shriveled, vestigial arms capable only of typing and shoving food into my mouth.

I've barely laid eyes on my husband all week long. He's left behind his yuppie lifestyle and gone back to being a professional drummer and studio guy. He's had gigs with various bands almost every night this week and a recording session or two as well. Our sleeping schedule only overlaps by a few hours now, so he's always asleep when I leave for work (unless he happens to still be up from the night before) and I'm almost always asleep when he gets home.

This weekend, though, he only has one gig tonight and then he's available to hang out with me. We're planning on going to the zoo on Sunday and we'll probably see the latest Star Wars movie sometime, too.

I went to a meetup of local bloggers last night and we had a discussion of how people who grew up with the Star Wars series speak of attending the last movie as more of an obligation than a treat. It's as if we feel we must view the final chapter, close the book on that part of our lives and finally move on. That's probably not the way most moviemakers would prefer to bring in big box office numbers, but whatever works!

I'll post on Monday, even though it's not a workday for me (hooray!). Okay, it might be a partial workday whether I like it or not, but at least I'll be at home. I hope you all have a lovely weekend, too.

May 26, 2005

I had my 6:15 to 7:45 yoga class this morning and it went better than I expected considering that I haven't taken a class in years. I made it through most of the poses and so far I feel pretty good and energized. And also very hungry.

There was the whole "seeing my rolls of fat in the full-length mirror" thing to contend with, but let's hope that problem will start to go away once I establish my new class routine (I'm shooting for twice a week to start).

All of this leaves me running behind this morning so I'll keep this brief. Perhaps it's time I started writing my blog entries the night before.

Enjoy your Thursday...two more workdays before the three-day weekend that I almost completely forgot about.

May 25, 2005

It occurred to me the other day that I follow a very strict diet and exercise regimen. The diet portion consists of a Luna bar for breakfast every morning, followed by whatever strikes my fancy throughout the rest of the day. My exercise routine involves extended computer sessions at home and at the office, occasionally punctuated by a stroll across the room for some life-sustaining purpose.

Every day I take stock of my progress according to how my clothes seem to fit. Some mornings I feel a little thinner and I can get by with wearing something semi-cute. Other mornings I need all the camouflage I can get. I must expend, oh, dozens of calories a day wishing to be thinner.

The folly of this whole process was brought home to me last night in the course of a community service project that involved entertaining a group of children for an hour or so. I pushed a little girl of about three or four on the swings and caught her at the bottom of the slide for at least a half hour. By the time she tired of climbing up the ladder to the slide, my lower back was spasming enough that I wasn't quite sure I'd be able to straighten up again.

I am getting entirely too old to keep up the "if wishing could make it so" physical fitness routine. There's a yoga studio five minutes from my house, and I'm going to be there at 6:15 tomorrow morning for a Vinyasa class. (I'd go today, but I'm too out of shape for the advanced class they have at 6:15 on Wednesday mornings.)

May 24, 2005

Every day last week when I went to our office/studio area to check my e-mail and write my blog entries, I noticed an odd odor. It was sweet and pungent and I suspected that my husband might have left some food in the garbage can by his desk a bit too long.

Over the weekend, I remembered to ask him about it while we lounged on the back porch and he knew exactly what I was talking about. "It's my gum," he said, pulling the pack from his pocket. "It smells like an apple core that's been left to rot in the trash. But it tastes good!"

It was the new and highly-touted Extra Cool Green Apple gum. My husband went on to say that he really liked the gum, but he didn't think he could keep buying it because of the smell. It stank up the office, his car, and anywhere else he happened to take the pack.

It's an odd dilemma to have to weigh flavor versus excessive odor when it comes to selecting gum. Maybe Wrigley should develop some kind of gum container that seals in the smell. Otherwise, I think we're through with the Cool Green Apple gum.

Congratulations to all of you for staying the course! A solid year of regular blogging is a big milestone.

Also in the blog world last week, we learned that a new online blogging magazine called Blogebrity will soon make its debut. Judging by its conceit of A-, B- and C-list blogger categorization, it sounds like the world's most exclusive (and arbitrary) blogroll. I imagine there will be some lively discussion about it at BlogHer.

The Blogebrity blog's first poll asks, "Has blogging jumped the shark?" Obviously, they're banking on the answer being "no," but it makes me wonder why there's so much talk about blogging being "over" already. As I'm sure Toby, Tom, Stacie and Charlie would tell you, it's just getting started!

Update: Heh, I'm a sucker. It turns out Blogebrity is a Contagious Media Showdown entry. And here I am helping them increase their ranking...

May 20, 2005

I went out to breakfast with the hubby this morning. so that doesn't leave me much time for a blog entry.

I have one last busy workday, and the weekend promises to be packed with a nice balance of household chores and fun activities.

We're taking my niece to the roller derby on Saturday night, so that should be interesting. I'm not sure I adequately explained the game to her, because she seemed very concerned that the rollergirls might knock her down. I think as long as I play up the excitement and popcorn aspects of the event, she'll have fun.

The rest of the weekend will be devoted to gardening, cleaning and relaxing on the deck (I hope). I hope you enjoy your weekend, too!

May 19, 2005

I still remember the first time I saw the first Star Wars movie. It was at a drive-in theater and my sister and I watched it from atop our parents' station wagon. My folks had padded our perch with blankets, but the luggage rack made it tough to find a comfortable spot to lie on my belly.

An interesting side note: because Star Wars was rated PG, my parents went and saw it once without us to make sure it didn't contain any inappropriate content. (We were also the only kids in my elementary school who weren't allowed to watch Saturday Night Live, but that's another story.) I wonder how today's parents will handle the latest installment's PG-13 rating.

I was a huge geek throughout junior high and high school, and as science fiction provides a lovely focus for geekdom, the premiere of Return of the Jedi found me standing in line outside the theater at our local mall, in costume. I already had a Star Wars-like costume, you see, from attending science fiction conventions.

Like many people who grew up with the original Star Wars trilogy, I've been less than impressed with the prequels so far. For the most part, the special effects are impressive but the human interactions leave much to be desired. Let's not even speak of Jar-Jar. I'm as anxious as any recovering SF geek (the purists prefer the abbreviation "SF" over "sci-fi") to see the story arc reach its inevitable conclusion, but I'm not in a rush to the theater this time.

Rather than submit to repeated compromises of my personal space, I'm willing to wait for the crowds to die down a bit before I cough up my $9.00 to see Revenge of the Sith. Some of my co-workers are going to see it this afternoon, but I definitely wouldn't want to take comp time and fight the crowds to go.

Therefore, I have decided to let opening day pass me by. It's possible we'll try to catch it on Sunday afternoon or perhaps one evening next week. I definitely want to see it, but I'm not excited to see it. I'm saving my excitement for when Serenity comes out. Yes, the inner geek girl lives on!

May 18, 2005

I've always loved games. When I was growing up, we frequently played Scrabble, Monopoly, Bingo and numerous card games. I distinctly remember our first Trivial Pursuit and Pictionary games.

Now I have an entire shelf in my dressing room piled almost to the ceiling with games. Unfortunately, it's seldom that my friends have time to spend an afternoon or evening playing them. I'm determined to keep trying, though, especially since I keep seeing new games I want to have: